Please correct me if its wrong, but my understanding is the FOV of a satellite camera will decrease in proportion to its resolution.
Another words you can see a big area but not small things. Or you can read a headline, but only on a small area (for those that can read headlines). Hence to see the small stuff you would have to know where to look.
The ocean and search area is
huge, combined with the fact they didn't get to the "most likely spot until significant time had past means dispersal was even worse.